Rebel in a Small Town Read online

  He didn’t need her kind of complication, not at all. He was the Interim Sheriff of Wall County, and soon he would have to start actual campaigning for the permanent position. People would expect him to make the right decisions, to do the right things. Walking away from his family wasn’t a right decision, not by a long shot.

  “It is serious, Mara. You don’t just get to wave some magic wand to make my part in this disappear.”

  “I can handle the discipline, the education. He won’t want for any—”

  James cupped his hands around her neck, pulling her to him. Mara squeaked as he laid his lips on hers, silencing her before she could say, for the fifteenth time, that she could be everything for the little boy in the picture. That James could walk away and never feel guilty about it. As if that would ever happen.

  Her mouth was soft against his, and she opened to him, her tongue tangling with his. She tasted like banana, and her hair was silky against the back of his hand. James wrapped the length around his fist, holding her in place so that his mouth could plunder hers. Mara wrapped her arms around his neck in response, rising on tiptoe and slanting her head.

  This they could do and it would be simple and easy. Just like it had been right up until Nashville. Kissing Mara was the easiest thing in the world for James. It was coming home while also having an adventure—familiar but exciting at the same time.

  She made a low sound in her throat, pressing her body against his. Her breasts were fuller than he remembered. He reached to cup her rear with his hand. Her hips were rounder, sexier. She wove her fingers through the short hair at the back of his head, sending another shiver of awareness through his body. Then she pushed her hips against his.

  God, he knew what she would feel like beneath him. He knew what to do to make that low sound come from her throat. How to kiss her so that she was weak with wanting. He knew that she liked to be ravished, but that she liked to do the ravishing from time to time, too.

  And she wasn’t serious about him. Didn’t want him in her life. Was giving him an out to continue on with the life that had been planned for him since the day he was born.

  He wanted that familiar, planned-out life.

  James broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers for a long moment.

  He also wanted the unfamiliar, unplanned life that came with accepting responsibility for the baby they made in Nashville.

  He wanted her to admit that while they hadn’t exactly been making plans during their weekends-only relationship, it still had been a relationship. And it had been serious enough that they’d both gone out of their way to pretend that it was just about the sex.

  “Is that serious enough for you?” he asked. He stepped away from her, putting his hand on the doorknob at his back. “Because if you keep telling people to walk out of your life, that’s exactly what they’re going to do.” He waited for her to say something, anything, for a long moment. Mara only stared at him. James opened the door and walked into the hall.

  * * *

  FOR A LONG MOMENT, Mara stood staring at the door. Fingers touching her lips. Rooted to the spot. And then the anger kicked in.

  This was twice he’d walked out on her. Twice in less than twenty-four hours. Yes, she’d been incredibly selfish and allowed her fears about, well, everything, to rule her. But she was trying to be better. Trying not to pack up her things and run off into the night as she’d done after high school, and again two years ago.

  Things had been different with James that weekend. She had shared a little of her past with him. She didn’t tell him about her career plans, but the things from her past, those were so much more personal than her work.

  He’d talked about becoming sheriff—not just for his father, but for himself.

  They’d made it through not one but three different meals without a single doggie bag or rushed sex.

  The conversations, the changes in their routine, scared her, the similarities between what James said he wanted and the things she wanted for herself—a home, a family, a career. Living out of a suitcase had begun feeling old. She missed her family. Missed having a space of her own.

  Mara held no illusions that Slippery Rock would be where she finally put down her adult roots, but she’d considered it. Had lain awake beside him that Saturday night two years ago thinking about it. Wondering if Slippery Rock could be her place, too. Wondering if the attraction and chemistry between them could grow into something more. The possibilities sent her running away from that hotel because, while the thought of living her life with James was exciting, it was also terrifying. What would happen if things didn’t work out? There would be no more stolen weekends. Trips to the orchard would be tense and uncomfortable because he would always be in the back of her mind.

  She’d been unwilling to take the risk, especially when he’d said zero about her being part of the life he talked about. So she ran, and wound up causing this entire mess in the process.

  Well, she had to deal with it now, whether she liked it or not. And uncomfortable as it would be, they needed to talk without him storming off.

  Mara followed him into the hallway and outside, catching up as he started the Jeep. She put her hands on the door.

  “What the hell was that?” Not the question she’d intended to ask, but a good one, she decided. He’d never kissed her like that, with anger and passion and that little kick of what had to be excitement. The passion and excitement had been there, but the anger gave the kiss an extra jolt. She wanted to feel that jolt again.

  She shouldn’t want to, but she did. Mara would deal with that later.

  “A mistake,” he said.

  And just like that, the jumpy, skittish feeling in her stomach melted into something that left her feeling cold, so very cold. She rubbed her hands against her arms despite the heat of the summer afternoon.

  “Mistake? Right, well, sure. We don’t kiss anymore. Haven’t for two years. I meant the slamming out of the door,” she said, because he didn’t need to know that the kiss had thrown her. He could credit the question to her being angry that he’d walked out on her again. “We can’t keep walking away from each other when we’re angry.” Not that anger had driven her away from him before. That was straight-up fear. Maybe they could get to that later, when he wasn’t so annoyed that he wore his cop face and tapped his fingers against his steering wheel in staccato beats.

  “I’m not angry. I’m pissed off.”

  “Like there’s a difference.”

  “It’s subtle, but it’s there. Anger has reason. Pissed off is pure emotion.” He looked at her for the first time. “Why does it matter?”

  “Because when we continually hold on to the anger, it makes it easy not to look at the deeper issues, the uncomfortable feelings.”

  James continued to watch her for a long moment, his brown eyes unreadable. “You sound like a therapist.”

  Yeah, well, a little more than a year in therapy could do that to a person. Mara swallowed.

  “I started seeing a therapist just before Zeke was born. I didn’t want to repeat the cycle my parents started when I was little. Therapy seemed like a good option.”

  “Instead of telling me I had a kid, you went into therapy?” His eyes widened. Then he shook his head. When he finally spoke again, mockery was heavy in his tone. “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to be honest with me?”

  “I didn’t start therapy because of you. I did it because of me, for me. For Zeke.” He had to understand. Therapy wasn’t a way of avoiding James; it was a way for Mara to confront her past, to be the kind of mother that Zeke deserved.

  “And that isn’t supposed to piss me off? That I didn’t even enter into your little plan? God, Mara, we have a kid together. A kid you didn’t tell me about for nearly two years. I get to feel whatever I want to feel about that, and you don’t get to turn those f
eelings into your excuse for keeping him a secret.” His knuckles were white against the gray of the steering wheel. “That rates a little more than a five-minute announcement followed by you writing me out of your lives. When are you going to grow up?”

  “I grew up two years ago. Quickly,” she said. But he was right. Her therapist would agree. James could feel angry and confused and anything else about what she did. “His name is Zeke—Zeke Tyler Calhoun. I did put your name on the birth certificate. He’s happy and active. He doesn’t talk much, but I can tell sometimes that he has a lot going on in his mind. I have a feeling when he does start talking, he’ll never stop.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, James, I am. I got scared in Nashville, and by the time I figured out I was pregnant, I convinced myself I’d let too much time pass. I knew there were things from my past that were going to be bad, for me and for him, and that’s when I started therapy. And one more time, I convinced myself not to tell you until I felt I was healthy enough to deal with whatever you could dish out.”

  He pursed his lips and looked ready to rebut that statement.

  “But the truth is that I was afraid. Afraid to be a mom. Afraid to be without my family. Afraid to be without the best friend I’ve ever had, whom I also happened to be hooking up with periodically. You can be mad at me for all of that. If I learned one thing in therapy, it’s that we’re allowed to feel what we feel.”

  “I’m not—” he began, but then stopped. “It isn’t just—” James blew out a breath. “I’m angry, yes. And confused. And...this changes everything.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Zeke doesn’t have to change anything for you. You can still run for sheriff. I think you’d make a great one. You don’t have to worry about supporting us, not on a county sheriff’s salary, because I have a great job with good benefits—”

  James shut off the engine and got out of the Jeep, slamming the door shut behind him. Mara took a few steps back. “If you tell me one more time that I have no responsibilities where this baby is concerned, I just might throttle you instead of the tackling dummy I tried to put through my basement wall this morning.” He advanced on her, pointing his finger at her chest. “I’m not going to walk away and pretend I don’t know I have a kid in this world. So we’re going to figure out custody and child support and insurance and scheduling and all the other things that go along with being a two-parent family. We’re going to do those things because they are the responsible things to do. But we aren’t going to figure this out in a five-minute conversation that begins with you telling me I got you pregnant and ends with you telling me I don’t have to take responsibility for it.”

  “I only want to give you options.”

  James shook his head. “Of course that’s what you want. Because me walking away would make things easy for you. Just like you walking away in Nashville was the easy thing. Just like you not telling me you were pregnant was the easy thing. Just like you letting everyone believe you were responsible for the prank in the bus garage after graduation was the easy thing.”

  “I did that to protect you.” It was the one selfless thing she had done in her life, and she’d done it to protect her best friend.

  “No, you used what I did as your excuse to walk away from here.”

  “You could have come clean at any time.”

  Guilt flashed across his face. Then that calm, cool, detached facade was back, and Mara decided she must have imagined the guilty look. “And that is on me.” He checked his watch. “My shift starts in ten minutes. We can talk more after.”

  Mara nodded—it was all she could do. She couldn’t keep bludgeoning him with the I-don’t-need-you routine, not when she knew now that it was a lie. Mara hadn’t expected him to fall on his knee to propose. That would have been preposterous. But she had expected to see more flashes of the James who had been her best friend throughout high school, who had been her lover—God, she hated that word. It sounded so...old. Clinical.

  James got in the Jeep, started it up and drove away, leaving her standing in the B and B parking lot.

  She’d run from him because she’d been falling in love with him, and the two years without him hadn’t dimmed the feelings. If anything, that kiss had brought them roaring right back to life.

  Now she would really have to deal with her feelings for James Calhoun because he wanted to be in Zeke’s life, and that made a little piece of her heart happy. It also left a big, empty place where the rest of her heart should have been. While James wanted to be in Zeke’s life, he didn’t want to be in hers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FRIDAY EVENING, JAMES slid the sheriff’s department SUV to a stop on the western side of Water Street. At one time, the street had been shaded by a line of oak, maple and honey locust trees. A few of the trees remained, but there were more stumps than trunks.

  From where he stood, he could see the marina, which used to be filled with sport fishing and pontoon boats. These days there were more empty slips at the marina than boats on the water. One section of the marina still had drunken pilings and dock moorings connected by only a few locks. Now that the farmers’ market was nearly rebuilt, maybe a few residents could band together to fix that wrecked section of marina.

  A couple of blocks away, his small house overlooked the lake. That section of Water Street had been virtually untouched. It was strange how tornadoes would wreak destruction in one block and leave the next free from damage.

  Kind of like how Mara had whipped back into his life. Professionally, nothing had spun out of control—yet. Personally, he wasn’t sure where to start cleaning up the debris.

  He could hear the hum of saws and the ring of hammers hitting nails from a few blocks farther down, where volunteers and construction crews worked to repair buildings damaged by the tornado. Days ago the sounds were soothing, reminding him that no matter what happened, his town would survive. Now the sounds grated, and he couldn’t help wondering how much more damage the tornado could do. Mara hadn’t said it, but the tornado had to be part of the reason she’d decided this was the time to come home. To tell him he had a child.

  God, he had a kid. James felt completely unprepared for this particular occurrence. A tornado flattening portions of his town? No problem. But Mara and the baby were something else entirely. The impact that would come when people found out about them would ripple everywhere. His work. His friendships. His family.

  James got out of the SUV. There were only a few other cars on the street, very little foot traffic to the cafés and tourist shops that would normally be packed on a sunny day in June. Next weekend, fireworks would light up the lake basin, and he hoped the promise of the regular event would bring both locals and tourists to the lake to fill the shore and the marina.

  Having things this quiet, despite the ring of hammers and the whir of saws, was just odd. He didn’t like it.

  James rolled his shoulders and, taking a deep breath, pushed through the wobbly chain link fence of the house on his call sheet. Wilson DeVries had been a curmudgeonly old man for as long as James could remember. But since the tornado had taken down his maple trees, ruined the roof of his shed and crushed parts of his old fence, he’d been more bad-tempered than ever. James knocked on the screen door of the house.

  Through the screen, he could see everything in its place. A line of remote controls sat on the coffee table next to a stack of Rural Missouri and Grit magazines. The floors appeared to be freshly polished, and there was a steaming cup of coffee sitting on the table beside an olive-green recliner that had to be at least thirty years old.

  “Coming,” a gravelly voice called from deeper within the house. Then James heard the shuffling of Wilson’s slipper socks against the hardwood floor. The old man wore a white T-shirt with Slippery Rock Sailor, the school mascot, emblazoned on the chest. The few strands of gray hair he had left were combed over the top of his head
. When he got closer to the door, he eyed James warily. “You here to arrest me?”

  “You done anything that would warrant an arrest lately?” James asked.

  Wilson pushed open the screen, which moaned a little in protest, and said, “Not that I can recall. You here for a well-check, then? I’m well enough.”

  James walked into the house, put his aviator sunglasses on top of his head and looked around. The rest of the house was just as spotless as the portion of the living room he’d seen from the porch.

  “I’m here because your lawn is breaking the town ordinance against nuisance vegetation.” He handed the notice to Wilson, who shoved his hands in his pockets. James put the piece of paper on the entry table beside the door.

  “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with my yard,” the old man said, a stubborn set to his jaw. “Just mowed it yesterday.”

  James glanced behind him. The grass did, indeed, look freshly mown. “The problem isn’t the grass. It’s the two maples you lost in the tornado that are now lying across your yard, along with the foot-long weeds growing up around them.”

  The old man rocked back on his heels. “I’ll cut up the trunk and the limbs as I need ’em for firewood this winter.”

  “You won’t be able to reach them for the thicket of grass and weeds by winter. They need to go now. You can have the local tree service take care of the cutting for you. They’ll probably even stack the wood nicely in the backyard.”

  “I don’t need those yahoos cutting up my trees.” Wilson put his hands behind his back and rocked some more. “Had them trim one of the maples last summer. Ended up looking like a lollipop, and no maple should ever look like that.”

  Now the old man was just being stubborn, which James should have expected since he’d already been here twice with warnings that Wilson had summarily ignored. “Your trees are already down, and if you don’t take care of it, you’ll have a family of raccoons or skunks or opossums living there before the Fourth.”